Julie Geller

Are you an artist or aspiring artist? Are you feeling stuck in terms of creating your art?  Do you feel like you have writer's block?  Well, if you want to change, the place to start is by examining your beliefs around your art.  Your beliefs in all areas – your artistic life included - set the template for what is possible to happen in your life.   

I learned this the hard way (well, many, many hard ways over the years!).  Here’s just one example: a few years  ago, my husband and I were having a very difficult time finding good childcare for our baby daughter.  I was literally distressed to the point of getting an ulcer (have you ever had to go to work knowing that your baby is not in the best hands??).   Well, I called my friend Marna and she asked me whether I believed that there is a good babysitter out there for my daughter.  I closed my eyes and thought about it for a long time and finally answered that, no, I didn’t believe that anyone could take as good care of her as her family members.  Marna suggested working consciously to change that belief by beginning to imagine a fantastic caretaker who we could leave her with while we went to work.   

Marna was right.  While I could spend 24 hours a day interviewing babysitters, I couldn’t find a good one until I opened myself to the possibility that there was a good caretaker out there.  

Well, the same is true of your art (or whatever you are building in this world).    You can only create as much as you believe is possible for you to create.   

Let’s look at a common belief that many aspiring artists carry around: “My work is not steady - I can only work when I am inspired.” Do you hold this belief?  I know that I certainly did for over a decade.  This is just one of many limiting beliefs I had around music that kept me from pursuing a career in music for many years.  Here are just a few of the others: “I have to be the best at what I do, “A musician’s life it hard,” “Good music is complicated and completely original,” “It’s a disaster if I hit a bad note in a show” and – I had to look REALLY deep inside to see that I believed this one  - “I put on concerts so everyone can admire me.”

Now, how would your life look if you believed that you could create something every day?  Or that creating your art was easy?  Or if you didn’t care so much if you forgot some of the words to your song mid-concert?  How would your life look if you believed that you could make a living creating what you love?

If you think you have some limiting beliefs that are holing you back, I suggest spending some reflective time with a pad and paper and beginning to list your beliefs around your art.  Here are some sentence suggestions that may help you get started:

I believe that creativity….
I believe that an audience comes to see/hear/watch me/my art because…
I believe that my artistic abilities are…
I believe that making a living as an artist is….
I believe that the purpose of art is…
I believe I was given artist talent because….
I believe I am good at….
I believe that the fact that so many others do what I do means that…
Regarding time to do creative work,  I believe that…
Regarding space to do creative work,  I believe that…
Regarding the importance of creative work,  I believe that…
Regarding my art, I believe that God… (change this one as necessary to fit your belief system)

It is really important to become aware of what you believe.   As you become more aware of what you carry around inside, start to ask yourself whether your beliefs are helping you create the life you want. Remember: the first - and most important - step toward achieving your dreams is changing your mind.

Wishing you a month of creative abundance.

With love,
Julie     

Next week I will be playing a very special concert for a dear friend who is receiving cancer treatment in Houston, far from her home in Denver.  I knew last week when I was working on a new song, Let it Be Love (Let it be love/let it be love/ let it be/nothing short of a miracle/ let it be love/let it be love/cause love is what we need) that we had to put together this concert.   Already, just through the act of writing and singing that song alone in my living room, something powerful was being unleashed in me and in the world. Something was healing. 

And then it really went beyond my living room.  Just by virtue of deciding to put this concert together - which hasn't even happened yet! -  and harnessing the positive energy of so many loving souls, the world is healing.  The right people are appearing, unexpected offers are being made, structures are changing, everybody is helping.   Even in her tremendous pain, my friend has something positive to focus on and is buoyed by the outpouring of love for her.

Our world is in need of so much healing.  Countries are fighting wars that are so longstanding that they do not even remember why they started killing each other in the first place.  People are in pain - physical and emotional.  Homes are filled with anger and yelling, if not worse.   People hurt each other out of fear and hopelessness. 

So, where do we start?  How do we even begin to heal such a broken world? By making a commitment to heal one small thing in yourself. When you begin to address your own wounds, your own unhealed spaces, not only does your life begin to change but also the lives of those around you.  And their healing helps those in their lives, and on and on without limits.   Really, you may ask, is that really how we stop dictators from acting like maniacs and whole groups of people from oppressing whole other groups of people halfway around the globe?   Yes it is, I say, and I know it because I've seen it firsthand.   I've seen my own family and friends change when I've healed parts of myself, just as their healing and growth has given me the courage to do the same.   I've been changed forever by people who don't even know they've impacted me at all.   The ripple effects of one person's actions are immeasurable..

So, here are some powerful places you can start right this second: forgive one person who hurt you, stop complaining, stop gossiping, begin cultivating gratitude in your life for your countless blessings, cancel your newspaper subscription(have you noticed the media is built on fear?), and turn off your TV (watching meanness and violence pollutes our brains and our world).   

It is not a luxury to heal yourself - it is a necessity. And we are all counting on you.    Remember: every positive thought, word or action that you bring to the world brings love and healing into the world, just like every mean or negative one brings hurt to all of us.  So, let's do this together - the only way it can be done. 

In love and gratitude,
Julie

I think I figured something out this week.  I've been thinking about creativity a lot recently.  You see, it used to be hard for me to write and I would go through long periods of feeling blocked.  Sometimes I was "inspired" and could write songs I liked but there were always long stretches in between where nothing came out. 

Well, lately, I've been just writing, writing, writing.  So, what's changed?  A lot.  Mainly, I stopped censoring and controlling as I go.  I let the words that want to come out come out and I let the melody that wants to come out come out. I don't put any parameters on it like I used to (ie - this needs to be complicated, artsy, impressive, original etc.).  I follow the song.  My only criteria for whether its good is whether it somehow moves me as I'm writing it.  If I'm feeling moved by a song, that means there are others out there who will be moved by it as well.   Also, I stopped thinking about how I'll be perceived for writing it.

Lately I've begun to think of songwriting as a partnership between my conscious and unconscious minds.  The germ of the idea always begins in the conscious mind and then I sort of bounce it back and forth betweeen my conscious and unconscious.  Once I've started, the unconscious really takes over and the conscious really just keeps it in check and makes sure that the song makes some sort of sense.

For a long time now I've felt the presence of God inside of me.  And the insight I had this week is that God and my unconscious are the same.  It's the part of me that knows the most as well as the part that is connected to the collective creativity in the world.  It's the part that has deeper insights that the conscious mind.

Wishing you unfettered access to the neverending stream of creativity out there.

- Julie